Tyler, The Creator's Transition From Death Rays to Light Beams

VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA - APRIL 27: Tyler, the Creator performs onstage at SOMETHING IN THE WATER - Day 2 on April 27, 2019 in Virginia Beach City. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for Something in the Water)

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There's a book called Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries. It came out in March of 2019 and was written by Safi Bahcall, a physicist who also co-founded a biotech company. Bahcall's expertise doesn't have much to do with understanding, discussing, or interpreting an artist like Tyler, the Creator. But there's a concept Bahcall presents as the foundation of Loonshots and it just so happens to perfectly describe the current state of Tyler's career.

That concept? Phase transition. You may remember this from science class. The teacher would have probably used the example where water changes form based on its temperature. At room temperature, H2O is liquid. Heat it to 100 degrees Celsius, and it vaporizes. Cool it to 0 Celsius, it hardens to ice. "The same molecule behaves like a liquid in one context," Bahcall writes, "and a rigid solid in another." He extends the phases of water to the notions of stake and rank in the business world, one of many applications throughout Loonshots.

When groups are small, for example, everyone's stake in the outcome of the group project is high. At a small biotech, if the drug works, everyone will be a hero and a millionaire. If it fails, everyone will be looking for a job. The perks of rank—job titles or the increase in salary from being promoted—are small compared to those high stakes. As teams and companies grow larger, the sakes in outcome decrease while the perks of rank increase.

Another example of the concept can be found in the world of professional sports. There's a whole conversation around the idea of the "contract year phenomenon." A 2014 study by Mark H. White and Kennon M. Sheldon, from the University of Missouri-Columbia, confirmed that the phenomenon exists. In the season before signing a new contract, athletes knew the better they performed, the more money they'd receive. This extrinsic reward has proven significant enough to boost performance across sports. However, Sheldon and White concluded, "We also found a lingering negative impact. In this case, there was a general drop-off in performance after contracts were signed. This holds true for both NBA and MLB players and follows the patterns found in past laboratory research." Having satisfied the extrinsic desire, an athlete might lack the motivation to give a similar effort. What would galvanize them to compete at the same level as their contract year? (I imagine a phase transition to an intrinsic desire, like self-esteem or pride.)

To be clear, phase transitions are inherently neutral. There are cases, like athletes before and after they get their contract, where things are more binary between "good" and "bad." But for the most part, it's just different states of being. Childhood isn't any better or worse than being a teenager or a young adult or married with kids or in your twilight years. Each phase of life (or phase of anything) has its own unique opportunities and limitations.

An artistic career can be similar.

For Tyler, the Creator, his early days, if summarized in a word, were provocative. An irreverent, I'll-say-anything-and-tell-anyone-and-everyone-to-go-fuck-themselves style mixed with extreme vulnerability. A clash of the classic idea of the rebellious, troublemaking skater kid with a post-808s & Heartbreak, Man on the Moon, Thank Me Later music scene that encouraged rap as emotional confessional. When it came to the lyrical content, Tyler seemed to carry the torch of turn-of-the-century Eminem. If you remember early Em—he was as captivating as he was intense. A quick reminder comes from a 1999 review of The Slim Shady LP by Gil Kaufman of MTV.com. "Detroit rapper debut has already drawn criticism with its tales of rape, murder and illicit drugs."

In the wake of 20-year-old Tyler's critically-acclaimed first album, 2011's Goblin, well-known LGBTQ musician Sara Quin (of Tegan and Sara) encapsulated the grave concerns many had over homophobic lyrics: "As journalists and colleagues defend, excuse and congratulate 'Tyler, The Creator', I find it impossible not to comment. In any other industry would I be expected to tolerate, overlook and find deeper meaning in this kid’s sickening rhetoric? Why should I care about this music or its ‘brilliance’ when the message is so repulsive and irresponsible?"

During an interview with GQ in August of 2018, Tyler reflected on that period of his career and life.

A lot of people think I'm still the 19-year-old that they see on the crazy compilation videos on YouTube. I was 19, 20, 21, during a lot of those videos. They think I'm still like that, and I'm not. Don't get me wrong: When I'm with my friends, I say crazy shit, but I'm not super wild and crazy like I was. People will run up and say, “You look like my mom!” What? Nah, dude. I'm chill. Just leave me alone. Yeah, it's annoying. It sucks. I hope I can continue to make that not be the case.

...If you ask someone, “Hey, what was your favorite food when you were 5? What was your favorite thing to do? Okay, you're 13 now, why don't you do it anymore?” and they're like, “What do you mean? I was 5.” They can't grasp that same concept from when I was 19, and this was all new, to when I'm 27.

What Tyler described is a phase transition. He's still the same person. But what he does and how he does it has changed. That's been reflected in his discography.

His initial projects—Bastard, Goblin, and Wolf—all shared in that darker, polemical, attention-grabbing collection of music and perspective. The work of a young artist who has not only dealt with some shit but has an immense stake in breaking through to the mainstream no matter the cost. But once he achieved that quantum leap from no one to someone, motivation shifts from stake to rank. From the extrinsic to the intrinsic.

Cherry Bomb and Flower Boy, his last two records, are still clearly Tyler, the Creator joints. Yet, in Tyler's own words, "I just stopped yelling and stopped saying crazy stuff...I do think that I've progressed in just making perfectly crafted stuff." He highlights a vital transition from attention-seeking to attention-earning. At this point in his career, Tyler has enough recognition and position that whatever he does the zeitgeist will discuss. Such security means he can whisper rather than roar. He can achieve through quality as opposed to strife. While Cherry Bomb was a noticeable departure from his first trio of albums, it wasn't until Flower Boy that Tyler managed to reintroduce himself, crafting an experience that's mostly light beams at dawn instead of death rays from a star destroyer.

The response to Flower Boy was immense. It earned Tyler his best reviews, the highest Billboard chart position, and sold more than all his other albums combined (then multiplied by five). The Grammys even nominated it for Best Rap Album. Tyler certainly increased his rank.

Two years later, we're less than 24-hours from the next album: Igor. The name is, conceptually, a stark contrast to Flower Boy. The previous title has a softness to it, summons thoughts of youth and nature and beauty. Where "Igor" is mostly associated with the name of the hunchbacked assistant to Dr. Frankenstein. There's an unavoidable connection to Gothic aesthetics. To humanity defined by marred physicality. Could this be a return to the horrorcore style of his beginnings? Or continue the existential musings on loneliness that so fueled Flower Boy? Or, perhaps, it's the transition to a new phase, a never-before-encountered version of Tyler, the Creator.